When the news of Russian help extended to Netanyahu to win the elections went as far as extracting the remains of an IDF terrorist killed in Lebanon and buried in Yarmouk Camp graveyard south of Damascus back in April earlier this year, many Syrians, Palestinians, and other Arabs felt heart-broken and disappointed; it was more like a backstab to the Syrians and Palestinians by their Russian ally and a betray of trust, usually this would include releasing numerous Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrian women, men, and most importantly children held in Israeli prisons.

Netanyahu needed any help to win the elections back in May to remain out of prison on charges of fraud, like all other Israeli officials, usual exchanges would include at least releasing a number of the children and women, and even men kidnapped by Israel and held in detention centers across occupied Palestine. But there was no exchange.

At a later stage Netanyahu, possibly under pressure from Putin, released two prisoners, one of who is a Palestinian who didn’t want to go to Syria in the first place, whose his family are in the occupied Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Zionists call it Hebron), and a drug dealer who has already spent his 11 years sentence in the Israeli prisons and was set to be released in a couple of months completing his sentence without any deal!

Thousands of children, women, and innocent men held with no justification by an occupation force and under the heinous silence of the United Nations and its many organs which are more focused to investigate bogus and fake news against Syria instead of focusing on real people held in miserable situations under the whole world’s watchful eyes.

That’s for the background of this story; what was revealed today should deliver a blow to the already embattled Netanyahu in regards with the snatching of the body of the IDF terrorist from Syria by Russia. Khalid Jibril, head of security and military in the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command), in an interview with Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news channel, revealed that what the Russians managed to extract was only the upper half of the remains of the body of the Israeli IDF terrorist and even that was missing its jaw.

In other words, not only did Netanyahu falsely claim he got the remains of the terrorist, he only got less than half after desecrating the remnants and fooling his family, and the public, just to get reelected.

Khalid Ahmad Jibril head of military and security PFLP-GC

Mr. Jibril challenged the Israeli leadership to deny this information, he added: ‘When they need to have these bodies back they need to pay the price for that which is releasing those in the (Israeli) occupation prisons, Syrians, Palestinians, or Arabs.’

The timing of this exposure is essential as the Israelis are preparing for the second round of elections and Netanyahu’s chances should grow slimmer with this news especially when used by his opponents.

The Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque expelled a Saudi journalist out of the Holy Shrine for joining an Arab delegation into Tel Aviv in the context of normalizing ties with the Zionist entity.

The following video shows a group of worshippers chasing the Saudi journalist, rebuking him for his pro-Israeli stance, and expelling him out of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Every year on May 15, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba (“catastrophe”) in 1948 when 1 million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their lands and over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated by Zionist terrorist militias to make way for the settler colonial so-called “state of Israel”.

May 15 is an annual occasion to mourn history, weep and recall the harsh scenes of massacres and bloodshed against thousands of Palestinians. It’s the date when Arab regimes humiliated themselves and accepted defeat.

Those Arabs who aborted all sparks of resistance that was launched in occupied Palestine against the Israeli occupation, starting with aborting the so-called “Salvation Army”, abandoning the idea of liberation, and striking the resistance led by heroic revolutionaries such as the Syrian officer Ihsan Kam al-Maz, Sheikh Izzidine al-Qassam and Abdul Qadir al-Husseini.

Arab commander Abdul Qadir al-Husseini

Either We Come out of War Victorious, Or We All Die!

Al-Husseini, who was the leader of the Arab military force in Al-Quds area, had said on the eve of the war, just before he was martyred on the dawn of 1948: “It is inconceivable that Palestine will be for the Arabs and the Zionists together – it’s us or them. This is a war for life or death: Either we come out of the war victorious, or we all die.”

The irony is that while this Palestinian leader was having a tense discussion with Arab traitors, he concluded with an eternal statement that shall be recorded for life: “History will judge you for abandoning Palestine, you and those who are behind you, I hold you responsible. I will capture Qastel [village occupied by Zionists] and die, I and all my fighters, and history will record that you – criminals and traitors – abandoned the land.”

“Deal of the Century” Doomed to Fail

Indeed, those Arabs have sought with betrayal and direct conspiracies on resistance movements to undermine the Palestinian cause and turn it from an issue of existence to a border dispute, dwarfing it with successive decrees and agreements, gradually dividing and selling the land in bulk and retail, which paved a way for the Deal of the Century which Washington is betting on Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arabs to support and implement.

After 71 years on the Nakba, Palestine and its cause have become at the bottom of the concerns of the divided Arab regimes. It has become a poem and a repeated statement in the fragmented Arab conferences and leagues which have become opposing entities and parties looking for different means to strike the resistance and study possibilities of surrender rather than rejection options.

However, Palestinian people have never had surrender as an option. They have turned the table upside down on Arabs and Israelis by escalating the conflict with marching weekly and protesting against the Zionist criminal. The Great March of Return, which was launched on March 30, 2018, was initially planned to last for 6 weeks until Nakba Day on May 15. Over one year later, people in Gaza continue to march on the militarized border fence every single Friday, demanding their right to return and an end to the siege and blockade of Gaza. They have been marching for more than sixty consecutive weeks without boredom or fatigue despite the killing and wounding of thousands of youth, women and children as well.

Gaza’s march of return

To make things worse, not long ago, Washington had recognized occupied Al-Quds as the capital of ‘Israel’, opened an embassy in it, and tightened the financial and economic siege on the Palestinians, while the occupation entity continues to commit crimes, attacks and daily arrests. The aim is to kneel down the Palestinians and force them to submit to the so-called deal with what it entails, from distortion of history to pushing towards the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the land of the diaspora.

700 Rockets in Two Days Proved Zionist Fragility

The Nakba continues in various aspects and at a more difficult pace, but the Palestinian people, who did not settle down for more than a century, are creating everyday new means of resistance.

Without any exaggeration, there is no day that passes in the occupied Palestine without an act aimed at the occupation soldiers, its patrols and sites, by stabbing or running-on operations until the Palestinian cities and camps, especially the Gaza Strip, have become strongholds of resistance fighters and martyrdom bombers, dragging the enemy into a continuous state of depletion.

All this was evident in the Palestinian resistance confrontation to the latest Israeli aggression earlier this month on the Gaza Strip, where the enemy could not bear the continued firing of rockets for more than two days, seeking an international mediation and Arab cease-fire.

The Israeli enemy, today, is no longer able to face the Palestinian resistance alone, which has created a joint military effort and coordination (Joint Operations Room) to ‘make Israel pay a heavy price’. So, the firing of nearly 700 rockets within two days had questioned the effectiveness of the Zionist defensive means –which even Israeli sources said were futile- and expanded the circle of resistance targets beyond Beersheba and Tel Aviv and even deeper into the occupied territories.

The Palestinian resistance is echoing in its every day battle of existence the famous statement quoted by the hero Abdul Qadir al-Husseini back in 1948: “It’s either us or them.”

“Israel” never gets tired of imposing the same occupation experience. It is stupidity or the nature of tyrants that gave rise – knowingly or unknowingly – to the popular icons that occupy a large portion of the society’s emotional state.

The “Israeli” army’s snipers rewrote the details of the story of the Great March of Return. Its heroes are a group of simple people who took to the streets in their thousands on March 30, 2018 to demand their historic right to return to Palestine. This was before the bullets transformed them into unforgettable icons. Others are still alive – and so is the resistance.

A sniper of a different kind

“Even Yasser himself did not expect the ending to be so quick. He might have expected how it would look, but he still had so much he wanted to do,” said a close friend of martyred journalist Yasser Murtaja. Since the first day of the Great March of Return, Murtaja had not left the field. He shot images of what his camera captured and what the snipers hit. The young man spent his 30 years in Gaza, the only city he knew his entire life as he once said. Since the beginning of his career as a journalist, he was able to capture the most beautiful images that reflected his optimism. “Always smiling,” his fellow journalists said, adding that he was one of the few who only had their pictures taken while they were smiling. He also published materials that made people smile but invoked a sense of bewilderment at the same time.

In the devastated Shejaiya neighborhood following the 2014 war, Murtaja filmed his documentary, “Gaza: Surviving Shejaiya”. The story revolves around a girl, Bisan, who he rescued from the rubble. A close bond formed between Yasser and her, allowing him to be Bisan’s only friend and companion through the mental and physical rehabilitation that she underwent following the martyrdom of her family.

He was an ambitious young man. Murtaja was the founder of Ain Media and one of the first individuals to take a picture of Gaza using a drone camera. The residents of the Strip, who never saw their land from an airplane window or from a skyscraper, saw the picture but without knowing it was him who took it. Murtaja was injured on April 4, 2018. Everyone prayed for him to get better. However, he passed away on the same evening to become the first media person to be killed by the “Israelis” in the Great March of Return. His colleagues carried his body as it was photographed using his drone camera.

A child’s patent

The image of the child, Mohammed Ayyash, aroused the curiosity of various international agencies. Ayash, who is barely nine years old, filed a patent and an idea in an attempt to overcome the tear gas fired by the “Israeli” army on demonstrators. He heard his father, who was wounded in the first Palestinian Intifada [uprising] (1989), say that onions are the best solution to fight the effect of the gas. Although the “onion mask” is only made up of a medical facemask and an onion he picked from one of the agricultural fields, the child became an icon on social media, as well as among the Arab and international press. After his picture was taken by journalist Osama al-Kahlout, he was honored and hosted by various media and national bodies.

“The onion mask” picture was recorded as one of the funniest, most innocent and challenging scenes. It was a piece of equipment the child had prepared in his bag along with pieces of potatoes because he was expecting that he would enter occupied Palestine on that day. Thinking that the stones thrown at the soldiers come only from refugee camps, he decided to stone the soldiers with potatoes! In this innocent manner, Muhammad recounted the events of that day. He became one of those who translated their actions into a simple language, the language spoken by the rightful owners before their occupiers, who are armed with all the instruments of death.

The revolutionaries in wheelchair

What symbol can a picture of a limbless young man leaving his wheelchair and crawling across the eastern border of the Strip present? He chants sometimes, and throws a stone that won’t fall further than a few meters from his body at other times. That is what martyr Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, the first icon of the protests against the American declaration to transfer the US Embassy to occupied Al-Quds, did. His picture and footage of his chants, which spread rapidly, was the beginning of the storm that his death caused on 15/12/2017. Abu Thuraya lost both legs in a bombing that targeted him in 2008. Despite his disability, he was keen to be the first attendee along the border since late 2017. The events of his martyrdom shocked the people in Gaza, as if he was telling them that they had no excuse when the wounded and the disabled head the ranks of the masses.

Fadi Abu Salah was Abu Thuraya’s successor. He was not content with just a symbolic participation in rebellion against his disability. He was an active contributor to throwing stones and mobilizing the masses. As in his life, his martyrdom in 14/5/2018 marked a turning point in the Arab and international media coverage of the Great March of Return. His photos contributed to the continuity of the popular momentum.

The first of the angels

A visitor to the house of martyr Razan al-Najjar in the Khuza’a neighborhood east of Khan Younis (south) can understand that the siege and repeated wars would only push a young woman to believe that the occupation is the cause of her crisis as well as that of her peers. Poverty that gave them simplicity, rebellion and redemption is the common factor that brought together Razan and the thousands who participated in protests along the eastern border of the Strip. The 21-year-old was known for her courage and her energy in providing first aid to the injured on the field. She seemed convinced of what she was doing when she said, “I am here at the line of contact. I form a human shield. I came here with courage and strength to save the lives of our brothers. Despite being injured and have a fractured arm, I refused to put a cast so it would not hinder my movement.”

Courageous Razan’s story came to an end when an “Israeli” sniper decided to kill it with a bullet that penetrated her back. The young woman, who was an active volunteer in the medical relief organization, passed away. With her departure, she shed the light on the cause of targeting medical staff during the marches. On the next Friday after her martyrdom, Razan’s mother wore her daughter’s medical coat and joined the marches with tens of Razan’s colleagues.

GAZA – Mohammad Jihad Saad, 20, became the first casualty of the first anniversary of the March of Return protests in Gaza when he died this morning after being hit by shrapnel in the head fired by Israeli occupationn soldiers deployed on the other side of the Gaza fence with Israel, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Wafa news agency reported.

WAFA correspondent in Gaza said Saad was hit east of Gaza City and was taken to Shifa hospital where he was declared dead.

A million-person protest set off today marking Land Day and the first anniversary of the launch of the March of Return protests in which more than 250 Palestinians were martyred and over 10,000 injured by Israel army gunfire.

The National Committee for Breaking the Siege had called for this million-person march.

“The Great March of Return” had begun on March 30th, 2018, by thousands of Gazans demanding the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their original homeland.

According to Maan news agency, thousands of Palestinians arrived at the eastern frontiers two hours earlier than the scheduled time for protests, waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans.

The National Committee for Breaking the Siege deployed hundreds of volunteers to help maintain the safety of protesters.

Comprehensive strike was observed across all cities and refugee camps of the Gaza Strip upon call by the committee; stores and shops closed their doors while schools and universities were suspended.

Three Palestinians injured by Israeli forces near Ramallah

In Ramallah,at least three Palestinians were injured today from rubber-coated metal bullets after Israeli soldiers attacked a nonviolent march at the northern entrance to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank commemorating the 43rd anniversary of Land Day.

Israeli soldiers fired metal rounds and teargas canisters at the protesters who gathered near an Israeli military checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah, injuring three of them by rubber bullets and causing many cases of suffocation from gas inhalation.

WAFA correspondent said the soldiers also targeted journalists and medics in the area and showered them with tear gas.

Meanwhile, Israeli army dispersed dozens of protesters who demonstrated at Huwwara checkpoint, south of Nablus in the north of the West Bank, protesting army targeting of medical staff and ambulances while attending to the wounded during protests.

Several of the protesters sustained suffocation from gas inhalation.

Land Day An Integral Part of Palestinians’ Political Life: Iran

Meanwhile in Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Ministry has issued a statement on the occasion of the Land Day of Palestine, saying that the day is an “integral part” of Palestinians’ political life and has played a key role in keeping alive their resistance against the occupation of the Zionist eney, Tasnim news Agency reported.

The Palestinian Land Day is an annual event to mark the killing of six Palestinians by Israeli forces during mass protests against Israel’s seizure of their land in 1976.

In late March 1976, Israeli troops killed six Palestinians, wounded 100 others and detained hundreds more who had held peaceful demonstrations against Israel’s confiscation of 21,000 dunams (5,189 acres) of their land. Palestinians, both at home and overseas, have been marking the event known as the Land Day with rallies and remembrance ever since.

The toll includes 254 Gazan deaths, mostly during peaceful Great March of Return demonstrations, assaulted by extreme Israeli violence.

Another 34 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, two others in Jewish state territory – all of it stolen from Palestinians.

Repeated incidents throughout the year, and every year, “are a direct result of Israel’s reckless open-fire policy, authorized by the government and the top military command, and backed by the judicial system,” B’Tselem stressed, adding:

“As long as Israel adheres to this policy, despite its predictable outcomes, the casualties will continue to amass.”

Extremist settlers killed at least three Palestinians, harmed many others, including young children. A Palestinians woman threatening no one, Aishah Rabi, was stoned to death in a car she was riding in.

Most Palestinian deaths are because of Israel’s shoot-first-ask-no-questions policy, its longstanding contempt for Palestinian lives and welfare.

Israel considers cold-blooded murder self-defense. Soldiers given unlawful orders use live fire against peaceful demonstrators in Gaza and elsewhere in the Territories.

“Despite the predictable lethal outcomes, Israel has refused to alter its policy,” said B’Tselem, adding:

“This ongoing profound disregard for the lives of Palestinians is broadly backed by senior policy-makers in the military, the government and the judicial system.”

Almost never is anyone “held accountable for these incidents, and the military law enforcement system whitewashes them. Given this sweeping support and the lack of accountability for these deaths, such incidents will continue” – as they have since the Jewish state’s creation.

Senior government and military officials are never held accountable for the worst of high crimes against Palestinians – rank-and-file military personnel almost never. The rarest of rare exceptions prove the rule.

Military law enforcement shows almost no attempts to punish Israeli wrongdoers when it comes crimes against Palestinians.

Settlers nearly always go unpunished for violent and vandalism incidents. One aggrieved Palestinian said the following:

“The settlers have the army, the state and the law on their side to protect them. We don’t have anyone. We’re guilty even if we did nothing. We’re always the guilty ones. It’s really hard to feel that your life is in danger and your property is being destroyed in front of your eyes.”

A Palestinian woman recounted the horror of a settler attack she and her husband endured, saying the following:

“At first, I thought that the people standing by the road were Palestinians who work in the settlements. As we got closer, I noticed that they were masked, and then they started to throw stones at us.”

“One of the stones shattered the front windshield and I hollered in fear. I told my husband to drive quickly.”

“I heard the stones hitting the car and felt that we were about to die, especially when the settlers chased after us after we’d passed them.”

“Iman asked me to recite verses from the Quran and to trust in God. I was shaking with fear and cold, because the window had been broken and it was very windy.”

‘Small fragments of glass got in my eye and I felt stinging and pain. I couldn’t open my eye and lots of tears were coming out.”

“When we got home, I left Rital with my sister and went to see the doctor at the village clinic. He cleaned my eye and gave me some liquid to rinse it with.”

“I got home at about eleven o’clock and I couldn’t sleep because I was so scared. I couldn’t get the images of the attack out of my mind.”

“It’s like they found live prey to attack. I still panic when I think about it. On Saturday my husband went to Nablus to replace the front windshield. It cost us 700 shekels. The body of the car also need to be repaired, and that will cost us more money and take time.”

Countless other horror stories are similar to the above ones. Yesh Din volunteers for human rights include lawyers, human rights experts, and other professionals.

They document, compile, and disseminate information on human rights violations in the Territories – by security forces and settlers, complicit with each other against defenseless Palestinians.

Numerous incidents happen almost daily. Palestinians are longstanding victims of a ruthless occupier, Gazans suffering most of all.

Under Israeli regimes from inception, state terror, institutionalized racism and apartheid rule, slow-motion genocide, and naked aggression have been and remain official state policy.

Palestinians are persecuted and brutalized viciously for not being Jewish – for praying to the wrong God.

Zionism is tyranny by another name – extremist, undemocratic, hateful, ruthless, racist, destructive, and hostile to peace, equity and justice.

It’s contemptuous of fundamental legal, moral and ethical principles – a monster threatening anyone and anything it opposes, a cancer infesting Israel, America, other Western societies and elsewhere.

It considers Jews and others unequal, Muslims especially demeaned, Palestinians considered virtual enemies of the state, Gazans most of all – besieged, virtually imprisoned, and held hostage for political reasons, no others.

The Territories overall are a virtual isolated prison, an entire population being suffocated into submission or out of existence – Zionism’s final solution.

Ethnic cleansing, land theft, mass gulag imprisonment for political reasons, torture, targeted assassinations, and other crimes without punishment reflect what Edward Said called Israeli state-sponsored “refined viciousness,” adding:

It’s “a disheartening bloody impasse,” the world community indifferent about Palestinian suffering, one-sidedly supporting Israel, ignoring its high crimes.

Francis Boyle explained that Israel willfully and maliciously “inflicts on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.”

Ilan Pappe stressed that “(t)he inhuman living conditions in (Gaza is) the most dense area in the world, and one of the poorest human spaces in the northern hemisphere, disabl(ing) the people who live it to reconcile with the imprisonment Israel had imposed on them ever since 1967.”

The rest of Occupied Palestine fares little better, subjected to dozens of brutalizing community raids weekly, numerous arrests and detentions, an entire population held hostage to an occupying power, treating them like subhumans.

For Occupied Palestinians and Arab citizens, Israel is a ruthless fascist police state, treating them as viciously as Nazis mistreated Jews.

For Jews, the Jewish state enforces neoliberal harshness, serving its privileged class exclusively at the expense of most others.

For the region and beyond, Israel is a warrior state, armed and dangerous with nuclear, chemical, biological, and other banned weapons, willing to use them against adversaries.

Criticizing Israel publicly is verboten in the West, notably in the US, especially through print and electronic media to expose its longstanding high crimes.

Temple University Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education Marc Lamont Hill is the latest casualty for stating hard truths about Israel on CNN.

The most distrusted name in television news sacked him as a commentator, the cable channel saying he’s “no longer under contract,” according to its spokesman, with no further elaboration.

At a Wednesday UN meeting on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with them, Hill justifiably accused Israel of “normalizing settler colonization…state violence and “ethnic cleaning.”

He said “(w)e have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea.”

“My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza.”

“The speech very clearly and specifically said those things. No amount of debate will change what I actually said or what I meant.”

Palestinians deserve universal support for their liberating struggle – Israel universal condemnation for high crimes too egregious to ignore.

Hill supports the global BDS movement. So do I as a cultural member, an unapologetic Israeli critic, a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights – not a self-hating Jew. The movement is the single most effective campaign against Israeli ruthlessness.

It’s why efforts in the Jewish state and West aim to criminalize and delegitimize what deserves universal support.

Israel bans BDS supporters from entering the country. Congressional efforts to restrict or ban boycotting Israel so far failed to be enacted into law.

Speech, media, and academic freedoms are fundamental, including the right to publicly criticize Israel or any other nations.

Anti-Zionism and public criticism of Israeli viciousness aren’t anti-Semitic. Claiming otherwise is a long ago discredited canard.

I’m anti-high crimes no one should tolerate. I’m pro-what democracy is supposed to be all about, pro-peace, equity, and justice for everyone everywhere.

I’m against anyone harming the fundamental rights of others under international, constitutional, and US statute laws.

I’m for rule of law principles and holding violators fully accountable for breaching them. I’m for a world fit and safe to live in.

I’m against the horrors committed by my country, NATO, Israel, and their accomplices against anyone unwilling to bow to their will.

I’m for saving planet earth and all its life forms by radically changing the way things are – dooming us if not stopped.

A Final Comment

Temple University where Hill teaches issued the following statement in response to his sacking by CNN, saying:

“Marc Lamont Hill has been quoted extensively over the last 24 hours. (He) does not represent Temple University and his views are his own. However, we acknowledge that he has a constitutionally protected right to express his opinion as a private citizen.”

So does everyone else, protected by law – free from unjustifiable recrimination. That’s the way it’s supposed to be but most often otherwise.

CNN’s action is another reason to avoid its broadcasts. Tune it out and other major media.

Choose reliable independent sources for news, information and opinion, largely online – the only way to get informed and stay that way.